Relay-based cooperative wireless networks are wireless networks which deliver information from a source node to a destination node via relay nodes.
To relay the information in the relay-based cooperative wireless network, the relay node adopts an Amplify-and-Forward (AF) scheme and a Decode-and-Forward (DF) scheme.
The former scheme simply amplifies and forwards a received signal to the destination, and thus features its simple procedure. However, noise is accumulated during the relay and the accumulated noise is amplified at the relay node.
The latter scheme obviously outperforms the AF scheme, without suffering from the problems of the AF scheme. However, as more signal processing is added to the information relay at each relay node, shortcomings including computational complexity and information delivery delay are caused.